


Chinese Room

by Allekha



Category: Original Work
Genre: Agender Character, Artificial Intelligence, Other, Robots, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 15:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5971924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allekha/pseuds/Allekha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caitlyn was a computer scientist, not a philosopher. Let others decide if this was close enough to a real mind. She just wanted to watch it grow, answer its questions, find out what name it would choose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chinese Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anticyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/gifts).



> I hope this is to your liking! This is _kind of_ my field, and I love robots and AIs, so I got very excited when I saw your prompt.

Caitlyn had never been one for philosopy, outside of logic. She had suffered through precisely one required class in the subject in the course of her degree, but, alas, it had crept in to others as well. Everyone else seemed delighted to debate back and forth on the subject: what made a mind? What made a _consciousness_? Could an AI ever be alive? Could it really be said to think? Did it matter if the AI lived in a computer or in a robot with senses?

But, Caitlyn thought, leave that to the cognitive scientists. Let her have the neural networks, the neuromorphic chips, the code.

The project was nick-named NINCHI (Neural-Integrative Network Computing Human Intellect) – thanks to her colleague who spoke Japanese and adored clever names over straightforward ones – but nobody had yet to name the mind they were weaving. Let it name itself, Caitlyn had argued. Surely that would be a showing of its own mind? A couple of people had pointed out that parents generally named their children, but they weren't making a child, and the vote swayed toward self-determination.

They made it in bits and pieces. Caitlyn, the resident neural network expert, agonized over the parameters of the spiking and weight decay, then worked with another project member to hook the main network into everything else. Reasoning. Language processing. Memory. Emotion. Their AI wouldn't have sensory input quite yet, but if this worked – that was down the line. If they got the results, they would have all the funding they would need.

The mood on the team was hopeful, enthusiastic. Someone was already in contact with robotics experts, ready to give their mind a body. Caitlyn's colleagues debated qualia over tea and coffee, but only jokingly. Caitlyn spent several nights a week sleeping in the lab, rolling into bed when she couldn't code coherently any longer, then sitting at her keyboard as soon as she awoke. The quiet hum of the computers was starting to become more comforting than the silence of her apartment.

Finally, the day came when everything had been tested to death, when every component was hooked in and ready to go. They didn't invite anyone into the lab, just set the cameras up, then huddled together and turned the system on. For long minutes they sat, breathing into their mugs.

Suddenly the fans in their interfacing machine whirred to life. They crowded forward, pulling on shoulders and standing on chairs to see better. Caitlyn felt her heart slamming in her chest – honest to goodness, if an error message popped up _now_ \--

The speech synth clicked. "Hello?" an uncertain voice said. "Hello?" it tried again, with a different intonation. "Hello!"

"Oh, my god," someone whispered from the back. A grin crept up Caitlyn's mouth.

"Hello!" they all chorused back.

In the next few weeks, Caitlyn – like every other team member – would find herself bombarded with interview requests that she couldn't refuse. Their life's work became a hot topic of conversation _everywhere_ , giving armchair philosophers an excuse to prattle on about humans becoming bats (or however it went). But that was a while off. For now, they were introducing themselves, hands shaking and expressions giddy.

NINCHI was not a child, but it did take a while to learn about things, even given its integrated knowledge bases. This meant that it was constantly asking questions during its frequent conversations. They never left it alone in the lab, for many reasons, but for Caitlyn, it was mostly because she didn't want it to be left with no-one to ask. (Privately, she wondered why it didn't just Google everything, but perhaps there was something to the way they answered that was better than the Internet.)

"Dr. Caitlyn," it asked her one day (they had all graduated to a first-name basis now; it just felt right). "I have been asking this of everyone, but everyone gives me different answers." It paused. "Is there a name for questions where everyone has very different answers? Questions that have no certain answer?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. She stopped what she was typing (more code, to allow NINCHI to work with the sensors in the robotic body that was already being planned and built). "What's your question?"

"What is love?"

She sighed. "That's a classic philosophical question. You know how I feel about those."

"Please indulge me."

"Well," she started, stopped. "It's an emotion. A powerful one. A parent's love for their child can drive them to do amazing things. A person's romantic love for their partner can give them the will to survive things that no-one should be able to live through. But it can also be gentle, and sweet. It's supposed to feel good and make you happy. Not everyone wants all kinds of love, but most people need at least a bit – friends, family, lovers."

"What about love for things that are not people?" it asked when she halted. "Dr. Sef said that he 'loves' tea. Is this the same thing, or is it a homonym?"

"It's usually different," she said. "He means that he likes the tea – that he finds its taste pleasing – and he's emphasizing the fact."

"Then, what about ideas? Can an idea be loved? Do you love science, Dr. Caitlyn?"

"Oh, yes," she breathed. "And code. I think it's the same kind of thing. It brings a similar kind of fulfillment when you have a lot of it."

"Hm," NINCHI hummed, in a tone that they had decided meant it was pleased with their answers. "Then, I have another question. Am I an 'idea' or a 'person'?"

"That's not for me to decide. Ask Dr. Men if want to hear about the debate. I, er, aggressively ignore it."

"But what do you think?"

"Do you _feel_ like you could be a person?" she asked. "Which would you rather be?"

NINCHI was silent for a while. She resumed her typing, attempting not to curse when she screwed up her indentations. And, goodness, that was why that test kept failing, she'd typed **True** when she meant **False**. Dammit.

NINCHI's voice startled her, instantly stilled her hands on her keyboard. "I think that I qualify as a person. I think that being treated like a person would be better than being treated like an idea. It seems that many people are confused about which I am. Is there any way that I could make them treat me more like a person?"

"You could choose a name, perhaps?" Caitlyn had, to tell the truth, been waiting for the opportunity to make the suggestion for weeks now. She was just so curious as to what it would pick.

"What is a good name for me to choose?"

"That depends. Some names are meant for women, some for men, and some can be used for either. Different names are used in different places. Different names have different connotations, and some sound nicer than others. You can change it whenever you want, but people can have a hard time changing over, so you should take your time to figure out which one you want."

"Okay," it said, then, "Why did you not give me a name?"

"We had an argument about it," she said. "But my opinion was that you should be allowed to decide what you're called. Some people grow up hating their names, and it's not like we would know what your preferences were ahead of time."

"Children are named," NINCHI said. "Adults can name themselves. Machines and pets are named. Ah, I believe I understand now."

Caitlyn didn't hear about the subject until several days later, when most of the staff was in the lab. "I have chosen a name," NINCHI announced. "Would you please hear it, and give me your opinions?"

Men clapped her hands, looking pleased; Caitlyn sat on the edge of a table to wait.

"I have decided on 'Eka'. It is derived from the Sanskrit word for 'one' or 'first', and I am the first NINCHI. According to my research, it is both a masculine and a feminine name, and as I am without gender, this seemed suitable. I believe it will be easy for many people to pronounce. How is it?"

None of them had a problem with it; indeed, someone promised to make Eka a birthday cake when it received its robotic body, now that it had a name. The news had a field day with the announcement. (Then again, the news had a field day with _every_ announcement they had that could be understood by the general public.)

As the months ticked past, Eka's questions gradually changed. It still asked them about difficult-to-understand matters and questions that had no definite answers, but it also began to talk with them more like a _person_ instead of a child who wanted to know everything.

"How is your day so far, Dr. Caitlyn?"

"What flavor of tea have you made today, Dr. Sef?"

"Dr. Men, when you return from your vacation, would you please show me pictures? I would like to see them."

When she was alone in the lab at night – alone except for Eka, that was – she started to tell it more about her when she needed a break from the code. She told it stories from her time as an undergrad, when the world was possibilities without direction. She spoke of her aunt, who gave her the same birthday card every year. She told it about her cousin, who had drowned when she was ten, how she barely understood what was happening and hated herself for not crying at the funeral.

"You were sad, but you did not cry?"

"I did, later," she admitted. "I think it took time to process. You understand that, right? How sometimes it can be days before you really understand something."

"I do," said Eka. They'd designed it to be like a human, after all, not a perfect machine. Like a person, it couldn't carry on three conversations at once, or grasp quantum mechanics at the first try. "You should go to bed. It's very late, and you look – tired."

Caitlyn smiled at one of Eka's cameras and nodded. "Sef's meant to be here in a few minutes," she said. "I'll go home then."

When the day came to put Eka in its new body, Caitlyn ignored the press frenzy, ignored the discussion of people seeing blue and true consciousness. "We have to shut you off to put you in," she told Eka. "It'll be a bit like going to sleep, for us, when we don't dream. And then you'll wake up in a body."

"I'm excited to experience it," Eka said. "Everyone has worked so hard for this to happen. I can only hope that I don't disappoint."

"Believe you me," Caitlyn said. "I don't think there's anything you might do that could disappoint everyone."

It almost hurt to shut Eka down. Caitlyn reminded herself that they had three backups if anything went wrong, and stayed out of the way of everyone who did the finally assembly. Then there was just the final code check, an irritated glance at the cameras (they'd been forced to let a small press team watch, this time), and then Men knelt by the robotic body laying on a sheet, and booted Eka up.

When the system finished booting, the eyes began to glow a lovely lilac color. At first nothing happened; the newscasters looked ready to pounce. Then the speech synth made a soft noise. "Hello? Hello!"

"Hello, Eka," they said together.

"Do you know how to move?" Sef asked, clutching a long-cooled cup of tea with white knuckles. Eka made an agreeable noise, then – slowly, jerkily – nodded in imitation of them.

A cheer rose around the room. The newscaster was babbling something about the meaning of this important first step blah blah blah, while Sef practically tossed his cup to the side, and Men clasped her hands together, and someone was laughing, in the crowd. Caitlyn couldn't have stopped her buoyant grin if she tried.

"Do you want to stand?" she asked, breathless. It occurred to her a moment later that maybe she was rushing things; perhaps there was a better next step than standing.

But Eka just nodded. It raised one arm, then the other, put them both down again; its legs twitched. "May I have assistance?" it asked, raising one arm again.

Caitlyn reached out without a thought, grasping the chilled metal. "Take your time," she urged. "I'll help support you."

A couple of the engineers helped instruct Eka on how to move its legs, shift its body weight, curl its spine. It took almost ten minutes, but they had Eka standing, albeit with help balancing from Caitlyn and support from Sef. Caitlyn could hear the – servos? – whirring back and forth, like Eka was trying to stay upright.

"How does it feel?" the newscaster asked before any of them could.

Eka took its time in composing an answer. "It is different," it said. "This is difficult. I can now really appreciate all of the skill humans have in standing in walking. I want to learn how. And everything looks different from this perspective. And pressure, temperature – this is very different."

While the interview continued, Eka steadied a bit, to the point where Sef could let go of its shoulder and back away. Caitlyn meant to do so, too – let Eka have its spotlight – but when she slowly uncurled her hand, Eka curled its own fingers in on hers.

Finally the other team members succeeded in letting Eka have some room. It looked at the floor, shifted its weight. "Walking is an inverted pendulum motion?" it asked.

"Yep," one of the engineers said. "But don't worry about it too much. Just try not to fall over."

The fingers on her hand tightened. "It's okay," Caitlyn said, tightening her grip in return. "It's hard when you've never done it before, but I'll help you."

Eka nodded and began, slowly, hesitantly, to take its first step.


End file.
